Sunday, December 18, 2016

How $20 Sales Can Add Up on eBay Over a Year

As eBay sellers, all of us wonder at some point if that item is worth listing. Since we factor our time into everything we do (and if you aren't, you should!), it can seem like a waste of time selling lower dollar items. Of course we all want consistent $50 -$100 sales, but that isn't realistic when you are selling a variety of items and striving to make your money on volume.

As 2016 wraps up, I wanted to show you an example of how $10-$20 items can add up over a year on eBay. I do this every year - analyze what I have done and review the fruits of my labor on all my business ventures. I've gone back over my eBay sales records for this year and extracted this data. Excluding some auctions I ran Oct - Dec to liquidate sale inventory (which will be explained in a different blog post), and consignment sales for others, these numbers reflect sales and profit from items that sold for $10-$20. (I'll come back and update the December totals in early January.)

Keep in mind that you can access sales from your eBay Seller Hub, but only you will know the profit because eBay doesn't know what you paid for something, so you must track that on your own. (Use this spreadsheet if you aren't tracking profit). I wanted to show you a month by month accounting of the actual items, sale price, and profit so you can see how do-able this is. For you analytical people, I removed the fees, shipping paid, and shipping cost columns of my spreadsheet so as not to overwhelm the less analytical people. This is a quick analysis of my cost, sale price, and profit after cost of goods sold per item.

The bottom line here is: My hard work and the eBay platform turned $634.55 into $3,641.97 over a year's time. All from the comfort of home and on my schedule. And these were just the $10 - $20 items, not everything. So even as my 13th year on eBay comes to a close, I still see the value of the platform and the viability of an eBay business. eBay works, is accessible to anyone, and is a relatively easy way to use the resources around you to make money all year long.

So there you have it. This also shows the value of record keeping. You can look at what you have accomplished and make better more informed decisions about your business for the coming year.

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